


Quiet House; Sweet Chamomile

by DovahDoes



Series: Adventures in Alvainia [1]
Category: The Shrine (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gen, Henryk only appears briefly at the beginning but is mentioned later, Hurt/Comfort, Marcus gets Mom'd, Obscure Fandoms 101 is back in session y'all, Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tea, anyway, he's a bit of a mess tbh so he needs it, i love that that is a tag on this website, thank god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-15 16:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15417345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DovahDoes/pseuds/DovahDoes
Summary: Blinking owlishly, and feeling incredibly out of his depth, he looks down and notes the small hand resting on his forearm, which itself is resting atop someone else’s leg.  He then slowly looks up to see the very same woman from earlier gazing at him with an intensely concerned expression, absently noting how the distinctive dark blue ring around the piercing cerulean colour of the rest of the iris is somehow familiar to him.His other hand is trembling when he weakly lifts it to wipe at his brow, which is dappled with a fine layer of perspiration in spite of the refreshing breeze he can feel coming through an open window he’d glimpsed above a countertop in the kitchen.“What just…?”  he rasps, starting to slowly get his bearings back as best as he can.* * *It's been not so long since the helter skelter series of events in Alvainia that left Marcus as the lone living member of his group.  At the moment, though, he's more focused on figuring out whose house he's in and maybe grabbing a little something for breakfast.(Prequel toDark Night; Warm Hands.)





	Quiet House; Sweet Chamomile

**Author's Note:**

> I.... may end up rewriting the beginning couple of paragraphs (again). Haha. They've been scrapped and reworked so many times, though, that I'm sick of looking at it. _Ugh_. So here: take it away from me!
> 
> Anyway, this work takes place pretty much _right_ after the events of the film. But pretty much before M  & H get together as shown in [Dark Night; Warm Hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13384179).

 

Marcus has never had a particularly keen or extraordinary sense of recall, having to rely on intense amounts of studying to prepare for exams, and often making use of a personal planner to keep on top of important appointments and events.  For whatever reason, though, his brain has decided to pick the absolute _worst_ moment to start trying to absolutely sear random, _awful_  patches of memory into a permanent place in his mind.  In regards to his absolute, literal nightmare of an experience in Alvainia, it is a unpleasantly mixed bag, so far as what he knows he will Never Forget, and what has been utterly cleared from his metaphorical, mental hard drives.

 

For example, Marcus remembers absolutely _everything_ up until the demon-possessed Carmen met her— _its_ demise with his help.  Or rather, he remembers everything up until a fresh-faced, desperate Carmen was abruptly looking up at him and pleading for him to help her with no time to _actually_ do so.

 

After that, he only has brief flashes of what transpires.

 

He remembers the mohawked blond, Henryk, staying nearby?  The other man holds his gaze with eyes that no longer burn with anger, but something else he seems literally incapable of identifying.

 

He knows that at some point he’d unsteadily stood up, for some reason— perhaps as defense, in case he had need of fleeing or fighting.

 

He _also_ remembers that at some point, the other men in the room must have moved elsewhere, leaving Henryk alone with Marcus, and the other man is almost looming over him—an effect only enhance with the ridiculously ominous hooded cloak situation he is sporting, but at least it blocks out the sight behind him which is Carmen’s bo—

 

“Hey!  Hey— no.  Focus!  You are hurt?”

 

The smell of blood, gore, and exposed viscera comes flooding back in, suddenly, breaking through the muddy state of numbed shock and delayed horror he’s been muddling through, and he gags, sitting forward and turning to the side.  Having no recollection of ever sitting back down doesn’t even occur to him, his distress is so potent.

 

There is a cool hand at the back of his neck, and a warm body very near to his shoulder and side as the other man braces him against the wave of violent shudders that overtake him after his brief moment of intense nausea.

 

He soon manages to lean back against the wall behind him under his own power, absently noting that he’d pressed himself into a corner at some unknown point.

 

The face in front of him goes from serious to strangely concerned when Marcus seems unable to calm his suddenly frantic respiration and desperately clamps onto the leather gauntlet-covered forearm before him in panic.

 

He wants to ask what’s happening and who the other man coming up behind Henryk’s crouched form is, but black starbursts are occluding his vision and his hearing is swallowed up by the sound of his own wildy beating heart.  His other, blood-slick hand slides over the wood floor beneath him as everything goes dark and blessedly quiet.

 

And then he is waking up in the bed of a pickup truck with his head pillowed on somebody’s lap, being held mostly stationary.  His eyes blink open for a few seconds, blearily, not taking in much of anything beyond snatches of the night sky and the sensation of intermittent drops of cool rain on his face.

 

There is a hushed but serious conversation being carried out over his head as he sinks back beneath the cloud of safe, quiet unawareness, vaguely cognizant of a heavy cape being draped over his body and keeping out most of the cold.

 

The next time he really, truly comes back to full consciousness, it is the shifting of bright, morning sunlight across his face and ever-so faint birdsong that pulls him back into the world at large.  Shadow and glints of glaring daylight move across his face in time with the swaying of verdant, leafy branches just outside the window adjacent to his bed, leaving a mottled mosaic of light and dark painted over the quilted bedcover that he gently bunches up in tremulous hands.

 

Where…?

 

His arms feel weak as he uses them to push himself up into a seated position, and the intense headrush nearly sends him tipping over to one side when vertigo hits him hard.

 

“Nnnn…” he groans to himself, squinting at the cozy, quaint bedroom about him in confusion.  Is this a bed and breakfast?  And where are Carmen and Sa-

 

The rush of memories and momentarily repressed emotions come back all at once, but seem somehow numbed or gentled.  As though they are still fresh, but not too devastatingly cutting.

 

In fact, if his mind wanders to _any_ subject, right now, it feels much the same—ever so slightly muffled or dampened.

 

None of the surreal, objectively horrifying events he can recall actually explain _where the fuck he is_ , though, so he figures it’s time to maybe get out of bed and find an answer to the question.

 

Swinging his legs over the side of the rather low bedframe proves to trigger another short bout of lightheadedness, and he has to close his eyes and press one had against the wall behind the headboard to reorient himself.

 

When his bare feet touch the clean, unremarkable wooden floor, he notices that there’s a pair of equally practical house slippers that are very likely meant for him to use.  For a brief moment, he wonders exactly _what_ kind of weird, awful acid trip he is trapped in, but quickly bats away at the lurking waves of hysteria that seem all too accessible.

Shortly thereafter, he lurches to his feet and is able to shuffle over to the fairly large window in the near wall, and rests one hand along the sill while peering outside.

 

Not too far away, there is small dirt road and several other houses a ways away that all exhibit  the same aesthetic as he’s sure the one he’s currently inside of does.  Reassuringly, there _are_ at least a handful of people going about their business; outside of a house to the left, an older man is dropping what must be berries into a large basket while a sunbathing cat watches on from a flat boulder nearby.  Outside of the first house down the road on the right, a young woman and a toddler look busy hanging laundry to dry— of course, interspersed with short breaks to play peekaboo and tag and whatever else.

 

Something gradually unwinds in the photographer’s chest at the sight of these mundane, heartening examples of what look to be regular people going about regular, everyday tasks.  Before he knows it, he’s thinking of how to tweak the composition and lighting of each prospective shot he would take, once he gets to ground level; of how the subjects would look when he just slightly adjusts the exposure and temperature while editing said pictures on his computer, and the way something as simple as adding certain tones to a still image can completely change the emotion it might evoke from the audience.

 

Marcus spends at least ten minutes at the window, allowing the distracting turn in his thoughts take him wherever it may, before he gathers himself with a brief shake of his head and recalls that he’s actually still not sure exactly what his circumstances _are_.

 

Is he still in Alvainia?  It definitely looks like he is, but they— _he_ hadn’t gone down this particular road at any point, so far as he remembers.

 

Maybe he’s just in another little village, nearby.  Or at an inn or something, so that the townspeople won’t have to deal with an intrusive **,** unwelcome tourist continuing to interfere with whatever unique lifestyle they have that keeps them safe from— from the _thing_ in the forest.

 

“Maybe,” he mutters to himself, “I should stop inventing infinite scenarios, and just _go find out_.”

 

His throat clicks as he swallows nonexistent spit and slowly approaches the doorway.  Unsure of exactly what might happen if he actually tries to leave, he first presses his ear to the door to listen for—well—something, he guesses.  When he doesn’t hear anything that indicates it would be a bad idea to exit the room, he grips the doorknob in clammy hands and gradually/slowly twists until he feels the catch give way.

 

The deep groan of the heavy door swinging on its old hinges makes him wince and sends his heart racing as he peers down a short, empty corridor.  As he makes his way unsteadily down the hallway on wobbly-feeling legs and begins to descend the short flight of stairs to the ground level of the home, he finally observes the first sign of anyone else inhabiting the near-silent space.  After rounding the end of the banister that marks the transition to the first floor, he sees two pairs of worn, well-loved boots by the front door— one rather large, and another rather small.  Probably a husband and wife’s shoes, if he had to guess.

 

Shuffling past the house’s entrance, he continues down a short hallway and notes what looks like the kitchen to one side.  Feeling a bit more comfortable the more he realizes that this is just a regular house he’s walking through, not much different than the one his grandparents had in the country, he very nearly has a coronary when he finds a bespectacled, older woman sitting comfortably at a gorgeous wooden table, calmly gazing at him over the rim of a large mug.

 

“Wh- _Jesus_ _Christ_!” he shouts, stumbling back out of the room and catching his shoulder on the doorframe he’d just walked past moments earlier.  Before he knows it, his back hits the wall opposite the kitchen’s entrance, and then everything before him starts to go a bit soft around the edges as sound fades in and out.

 

His heart is racing, and he can hear something banging at the door to the room before an inhumanly dark, bassy growl sounds from beyond it.  The register is deep enough that he can feel the floor beneath his hands vibrate minutely.  When he _got_ to the floor, he doesn’t know, but it seems like a trivial thought, at the moment, because trying to find and grasp any thought through blinding terror is proving difficult.

 

He’s now gasping for breath, as it feels like phantom hands are wrapped around his throat and pressing tighter and tighter over his windpipe.  And then eh can make out footsteps slowly approach from one side, which makes no sense, because clearly, _it_ is right in front of him, already.

 

“Marcus!” a voice barks, sharply, to his left.

 

And just like that, the strange vision of an entirely different room that had somehow overlaid that of the one before him dissipates, leaving only a quaint, little home’s kitchen behind.

 

Blinking owlishly, and feeling incredibly out of his depth, he looks down and notes the small hand resting on his forearm, which itself is resting atop someone else’s leg.  He then slowly looks up to see the very same woman from earlier gazing at him with an intensely concerned expression, absently noting how the distinctive dark blue ring around the piercing cerulean colour of the rest of the iris is somehow familiar to him.

 

His other hand is trembling when he weakly lifts it to wipe at his brow, which is dappled with a fine layer of perspiration in spite of the refreshing breeze he can feel coming through an open window he’d glimpsed above a countertop in the kitchen.

 

“What just…?”  he rasps, starting to slowly get his bearings back as best as he can.  He’s sure that at any moment, knowing himself, he will be absolutely _flush_ with mortification over whatever dramatic episode he’d just had in front of this complete stranger.

 

Instead of peppering him with questions or just straight up tossing him out the front door, as Marcus kind of expects (and would even accept), the woman instead pats comfortingly at his arm and smiles softly.

 

“Hush.  Something startled you and must have triggered some sort of memory or flashback.  Now relax here, and I will bring you something warm to drink and maybe a little breakfast, yes?  Are you alright if I leave you alone for a minute?”

 

Marcus is more than a bit lost, but his talkative stomach certainly seems ready for something toe eat.

 

“Um, sure?  I— yes.”

 

With a quick clasp of a warm hand on his bicep first, she then stands up and enters the kitchen, preparing a quick cup of tea from a kettle on a table he hadn’t noticed earlier.  Embarrassingly enough, when her form disappears past his sightline to retrieve something on the other side of the room, his heart picks up a few beats in apparent anxiety.

 

 _Jesus_ , he thinks to himself.  _If Dad thought I was a wuss as a kid…_

 

Thankfully, his still-unnamed housemate returns, at that moment, with not only a cup of herbal-scented tea, but a small plate of lightly buttered bread, sliced thickly and a bit unevenly.

 

She places both items to his right side, and then quickly pops back through the doorway to grab her own mug of tea before seating herself almost directly in front of him.  The older woman leans her back comfortably against the opposite wall of the small corridor and lays her legs to the side comfortably, as though sitting on the floor and having a drink with a (likely) mentally unstable twenty-something might be a regular occurrence in her routine.

 

Marcus struggles to get the ‘polite socializing’ center of his brain back in whack, as sitting here dumbly seems to be about the extent of his current capabilities.  Luckily, his host is better equipped for company and gestures for him to partake of the little meal to his side before resting her own mug against her thigh for a moment.

 

“I do hope _rumianek_ — sorry— chamomile is alright.  It looks like you could do with a bit of calm, _mój drogi_.”

 

He chuckles quietly with an edge of quieted hysteria before uttering a quick and simple “Thanks.”

 

Her wry tone is welcome, as the young man is rapidly rebuilding his defenses and being outright coddled is not exactly something he thinks he could deal with at the moment.  He takes a small bite of the bread after swallowing a scalding mouthful of tea, and finds the crust to be delightfully soft and somewhat sweet.

 

Something of his pleasure must show on his face, because his hallway buddy’s face lights up in a smirk as she places her mug to her side, on the ground.

 

“Ah— you like the bread?  It’s Henryk’s favourite, too.  _And_ his brother’s.  I am not sure about their father, though, as he eats almost anything you put in front of him without complaint or comment.”

 

Marcus’s eyes widen, and he manages to find his voice, again.

 

“Henryk?” he says.  “You’re his— this is _your_ house?  Why…”

 

In spite of exactly how relaxed he’d been getting, he can just _feel_ the way his pulse trips over itself for a moment and starts to climb even higher.  This, too, must be obvious to the woman across from him, as she almost knocks over her own cup of chamomile in order to quickly, awkwardly scooch forward to sit knee, to knee with him, mirroring the cross-legged position that he’d allowed his tucked-up legs to fall into after starting to eat.

 

“Whoah, Marcus— apologies for springing that on you.  I am always very quick to talk about my family, as odd as they can be.  Perhaps I should have started with introducing myself, some time ago, but I was more worried about making sure you did not re-injure your throat, again, after the bruising has finally started to heal a bit.”

 

Reflexively, Marcus runs a hand gently down from underneath his chin and to his clavicle, wincing at what feel like fresh welts atop what must be some heavily discoloured skin.  His host continues speaking, unerringly batting his hand away from his neck, mid-sentence with an effortless attention to multitasking that just seems to come easier to most mothers.

 

“My name is Olesia Wójcik, and— _ej_ , _stop_ touching those scratches— and I’m happy to have you with us, for as long as you’d like to stay.  I am…” here, she seems to struggle with an insurmountably complex thought that she wishes to express, eventually settling on the simplest, most straightforward words.

 

“I am sorry about what happened, here, to you.  To you _and_ your friends.”

 

The look in her eyes is not haunted, so much as it is undisguisedly empathetic and sorrowful.  Marcus, in spite of his inherent suspicion about many things happening in this relatively small village still finds himself wanting to comfort _her_ in return.  Instead he musters up a half-hearted quirk of his lips and holds out his hand to shake hers, over their legs, huskily giving his name in a deeply ingrained polite gesture.

 

“Marcus Walcott.  It’s a pleasure to meet you, and thanks for having me, Mrs. Wójcik.”

 

With a nod, she breaks their embrace and soon rests against the opposite wall, again.

 

When he finishes both his food and his drink, they get up from the floor together and place their dishes in the sink before settling into chairs at the sturdy kitchen table where they remain talking long into the early afternoon. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Please forgive any wildly inaccurate bits of Polish-- as always, google was my source.. 

 

 **Rumianek** _-_ Chamomile.  [(Polish)]   |   _Pronounced_ _:_   ('R' at start is rolled) Rue-mauh-nyek

 **Mój drogi -** My dear.  [(Polish)]   |   _Pronounced_ : ('R' in 'drogi' is rolled; the 'g' is hard)  Moy droe-gi

 **Wójcik**   -  Very popular Polish surname.  [(Polish)]    |    _Pronounced_ _:_   Voy-chick

 **Ej  -** Hey/look. (Same as using 'hey!' as an interjection in English.)  [(Polish)]   |   _Pronounced_ _:_ A  (as in, how you say the first letter of the English alphabet)

 

For anything else, just hit up Google (or try [Forvo](https://forvo.com/) to hear native speakers saying words).

**Author's Note:**

> (I imagine Henryk's mom to have a far lighter accent than her son. Mostly because she's spent a lot more time outside of the village Because of Reasons. Hence her English seeming a bit more advanced than that of most of the Alvainians we saw in the film.)
> 
> *
> 
> Come check out [my writing blog](https://dovahdoeswrite.tumblr.com/), where I post early fic snippets and keep you updated on what i'm working on in what fandoms!
> 
>    
> Kudos and comments are love: feel free to leave me some, kind readers~. (ღˇ◡ˇ)~♥


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